


Captain & Commander

by Antipode



Series: I Was Lost Without You [12]
Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Bigotry & Prejudice, Biotic Shepard (Mass Effect), Canon Lesbian Relationship, Custom Shepard (Mass Effect), F/F, Family Drama, Fluff and Angst, Humor, Implied Sexual Content, Innuendo, Interspecies Romance, Lesbians in Space, Mild Smut, Mother-Daughter Relationship, No Lesbians Die, Paragon Shepard (Mass Effect), Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-27
Updated: 2020-10-06
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:48:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26676184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Antipode/pseuds/Antipode
Summary: The crew of the SSV Normandy SR-2 (at least, some of them) receive a surprise invite aboard the SSV Orizaba to dine with Captain Hannah Shepard. Liara knows very little about her bondmate's mother, save that their relationship is estranged at best.Set sometime during the events of ME3, post Cerberus assault on the Citadel, pre-firing of the Crucible. Liara's perspective.
Relationships: Female Shepard/Liara T'Soni
Series: I Was Lost Without You [12]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1937521
Comments: 6
Kudos: 78





	1. First Impressions

"Priority message from the fleet, Commander..?"

Samantha Traynor stepped into the shuttle bay, looking slightly lost as she clutched a data-pad awkwardly, voice fading into the ever-present drone of the Normandy's drive core. Flight Lieutenant Cortez met her eyes from across the room, in the middle of what appeared to be inventory reports with a pair of suitably chagrined-looking junior ratings. His expression softened slightly as he noticed her, and without interrupting his lecture jerked his head towards opposite the frigate's only functional Kodiak shuttle, where some variety of heavy vehicle would have been moored had their been room during the ship's retrofitting on Earth. That had been before the invasion. A lot had been left behind.

In the hangar where a Mako or Hammerhead would have suspended, Lieutenant James Vega had cleared out a weapons bench to field-strip and customize modify his own weapons, away from the prying eyes of his friend the quartermaster. He had also converted the space into a workout area, where he and Commander Shepard were often found conducting PT well above and beyond what was expected or indeed possible by the rest of the ship's crew. Both officers were exceptional physical specimens, but Traynor wondered privately how it was that the much smaller and slimmer Shepard seemed to so effortlessly keep up and indeed surpass Vega, who seemed to consist primarily of muscle and apparently worked out in every spare moment he wasn't eating, sleeping, or fighting.

"One-ten," Vega exhaled. "You keepin' up, Lola? Or just watching the show?"

"One-ten," she breathed evenly. "That it? You're slowing, Vega. I'm one-nineteen. One-twenty. One twenty-one…"

The two of them were at it again, as usual, working a pull-up bar with a vigor usually reserved for assaulting an enemy position. The burly Vega moved like a piston, bulging muscles rippling as he rose and fell to a rapid cadence. Shepard, lean and long and sinuous, seemed to slide up and down the bar like a wave, cresting and receding with a mountain lion's grace. Traynor caught herself staring at the way Shepard's back muscles shifted and flexed and as she pulled herself up, felt a growing heat under her collar admiring her musculature, and quickly shifted her gaze to the floor. _If Dr. T'Soni caught me looking like that, she'd use her biotics to fling me out of the airlock,_ she chided herself. She cleared her throat.

"Um, Commander? Priority message from the fleet."

"Hackett?" Shepard asked without slowing her pace.

"No ma'am. It's from the dreadnought SSV Orizaba. From a… oh, this must be a mistake… It says it's from a Captain Shepard."

Shepard froze.

“The Orizaba? That’s not a mistake, Specialist.” She finished one more pull-up before lowering herself back down to the deck, boots hitting metal with a heavy clang. “That’s my mother.”

“Naw, couldn’t be,” Lieutenant Vega grunted, lowering himself down as well. “Lola don’t got a mother. They assembled her out of spare parts and dead G.I.s at N-School.” Shepard mock-growled at him, nearly sending him sprawling with a playful shove, before throwing a towel around her shoulders. Traynor tried very hard not to imagine kneading the tension out of those beautifully-defined shoulderblades.

“Let’s have it, Specialist.” She was holding her hand out, expectantly.

Mortified, Traynor handed over the data-pad, struggling to find something else to focus her attention on. The fading paint on the wall of the shuttle bay, for example, or the airlock she was wishing she could throw herself out of.

“Good news, Commander?” she asked meekly.

“Hardly.” The Commander sighed. “She’s invited us for dinner.”

  
  


It was all, Liara T’Soni reflected, more than a little ridiculous.

 _I have published a dozen scholastic papers and journals in the most highly-regarded Thessian historical circles,_ she thought, heart fluttering, holding up two separate sets of crest-ornaments and studying herself in a small mirror. _I advanced the study of Prothean xeno-archaeology forward a century or more just assisting Sybilla in deciphering the beacon she discovered on Eden Prime. I helped her defeat Saren and Sovereign. I killed the Shadow Broker and took his place. I discovered the plans for the Crucible on Mars. I have accomplished more in my one hundred and nine years of life than many asari do in their entire thousand-year lifespans._

_So why do I feel so insignificant at the prospect of dinner with my bondmate’s mother?_

After a few moment’s frustrated comparison, she opted for the slimmer of the two crest-ornaments, a platinum diadem that Sybilla had bought for her on Illium. She glanced at herself in the mirror for what felt like the sixty-third time, smoothing out an invisible wrinkle on the full-length asari gown in crimson and violet she had selected, out of a closet comprised largely of lab coats and compression suits to wear under a tired set of armor. Her brow furrowed. It would have to do.

She’d done her research on Captain Hannah Shepard, of course - Sybilla herself had been reticent at best when describing her mother, save for that she had effectively disowned her at sixteen when she’d lied about her age to join the Alliance navy, that they spoke perhaps once a year, that they had never been close even when Sybilla had been a child. She had seen glimmers, whispers of the woman at the edges and depths of her bondmate’s mind when they melded, but had never delved too deeply; she knew Sybilla loved and trusted her to her core, but there were some conversations she was simply not ready to have, and it would have been a violation of that trust to explore her lover’s more painful memories and thoughts without her permission.

It was public record that Hannah Shepard was born in Vancouver, on Earth, in 2132; that she was from a long and distinguished military family among the Earth Systems Alliance; that she’d had Sybilla at twenty-two, out of wedlock; that she had fought in the First Contact War as a twenty-five-year-old Lieutenant aboard Admiral Kastanie Drescher’s flagship when Shanxi was liberated from the turians; that she was the youngest female officer in Alliance naval history to be granted command of a carrier, the SSV Einstein. That she’d been awarded a Galactic Unit Citation, a Navy Cross, three Palladium Stars, a Star of Terra, and minor citations than could easily be counted, which ranked her as one of the most decorated officers in Alliance history, behind Steven Hackett, David Anderson, and her own daughter. That she’d very publicly snubbed a promotion to Admiral in the wake of that daughter’s death, calling it a “pity promotion” and demanding to retain captaincy of her ship, the Orizaba. Words such as “indominable” and “formidable” and “uncompromising” were frequently used to describe her. “Warm” or “friendly” were not.

With a little digging, Liara had learned that Captain Shepard was well-respected but not well-liked; that she was known as an implacable disciplinarian; that she was known for a strict adherence to both naval regulation and tradition, and that she fervently believed that humanity should and must stand on its own, without the assistance of other species. Sybilla had once bitterly joked that Captain Shepard - never “mother” or “mom” or even “Hannah,” but _Captain Shepard_ \- would vote Terra Firma but found them too moderate. She was fifty-four years old, and had the same hawkish green eyes and peppering of freckles across the bridge of her nose as Sybilla, as well as the same tall, lanky build, the same finely-sculpted cheekbones, the same strong jaw and fine, dark hair. She maintained a very strict diet and workout regimen, she was fluent in several human and non-human languages, she was once a highly-regarded athlete at _fencing_ , of all sports, and had honorary degrees in a half-dozen scientific disciplines.

She was, to put it plainly, possessed of the same hyper-competence, confidence, and razor-focus that Sybilla was. The prospect of being in a room with a pair of Shepards sent chills down Liara’s spine. Particularly a pair of Shepards that famously did not get along.

A knock at her door snapped her back to reality. “Ready, Birdie?” Sybilla’s slightly-muffled voice was filled with a false sense of enthusiasm, underlined with a tension that Liara could tell without even seeing her bondmate. “For the record, I wouldn’t blame you if you decided to stay behind. I was going to order Garrus to take _my_ place, but She might have a Shanxi flashback and start a diplomatic incide-” she trailed off as Liara opened the door.

Sybilla was dressed in her smartest naval blues; an epauleted dress jacket with a high collar with gold fringes and buttons and a triple-row of citations and awards clinging to her breast, an open-collared white blouse, a pair of dress gloves tucked into a high belt. Her dress skirt was, in Liara’s eyes, doing wonderful things for her legs and hips - she could count the times she’d seen Sybilla in anything approaching a dress on one hand, and despite the severity of the uniform and the situation, Liara could feel a rising heat from beneath her collar.

Sybilla, for her part, seemed as taken by Liara’s dress as Liara was by her skirt. She could feel those piercing green eyes crawling over her, biting her bottom lip, her head tilted ever so slightly, wearing an expression that was equal parts insolence and hunger. Liara didn’t need the mind-meld to know what her bondmate was thinking, and the heat under her collar - and elsewhere within her - was making her light-headed. “Breathtaking,” she breathed, after teasing her partner a little longer with the lavisciousness of her gaze. “Stunning, Liara. You look incredible.”

She favored Sybilla with a coy smile. “Flatterer.” She leaned in and brushed her lips over her lover’s, resting their foreheads together for just a moment. _Anything more and we really_ will _miss dinner_ , she thought with a slight thrill. “You are looking lovely tonight.”

“For a change, you mean?” Sybilla drew a thumb gently up Liara’s chin, tilting her head upwards as if in the promise of another kiss, before planting one softly on the tip of her nose.

Liara linked arms with her bondmate and pulled her away from her door and towards the elevator. “If you decided to dress like this more often, I would not complain,” she said, voice light and playful. She could feel the tension in Sybilla’s muscles, the coiled, embattled, ready-for-trouble, balls-of-her-feet bouncing that Liara had come to expect before a potentially deadly mission, not a dinner reunion with a family member.

Sybilla’s nose wrinkled. “I’ve had to fight in a dress before. It isn’t fun for anyone involved.” Mischief danced in her eyes. “For you, however, I might make an exception.”

  
  


Stepping aboard the Orizaba was both obviously and imperceptibly different from being aboard the Normandy, Liara decided immediately. From the particular thrum of the vaunted tantalus stealth drive core to the almost frenetic aura of impending danger that seemed to reverberate through the halls, the Normandy was warmth, light, life. Her crew was passionate, talented, dangerous - and they knew it, moved like it, with the confidence of the best trained and equipped marines the galaxy had to offer, those who had stared death in the face so many times the grim visage had become an old friend. It was a feigned, almost casual affectation, a swagger born of earning a place within the ranks of one of the most legendary warships in Alliance history.

The Orizaba had no such warmth, no such individuality or personality. There was not a hair out of place, not a line within her vast bulk not measured, filed down to a decimal point. Every inch of her was cold calculation, every crease deliberate. The marines that greeted the Normandy’s shore party looked cut from the same sheet of cloth; their salutes crisp, their expressions regulation. A deck officer in a uniform as pristine as the dress blues Sybilla had pried out of a vacuum-sealed bag met them before they could take more than a half-step aboard.

“Commander Shepard. Welcome aboard the SSV Orizaba. Captain Shepard awaits in her private observation deck. If you would follow me..?”

“It’s so… quiet,” James observed, nervously adjusting his own collar. He and Major Alenko had poured themselves into their own dress blues, much the same as those Sybilla wore, with a few less embellishments. _And no skirt,_ Liara thought with a twinge of amusement. She often forgot that unlike the monogendered asari, humans experienced gender across a much more broad spectrum, and for reasons she could not fathom often assigned specific styles of dress according to where one fell along that spectrum. The thought of dark, brooding Kaidan Alenko and the powerfully-sculpted James Vega in military dress skirts _was_ a little funny, she supposed.

“Captain Shepard always ran a tight ship,” Kaidan said knowingly. He seemed much more at-ease in formal dress. Clean-shaven and soulful-eyed, he had caused a noticeable stir among the enlisted crew of the Normandy as they made ready to depart; good-natured wolf-whistles and cat-calls sending them off as they crossed the CIC.

“You’ve met the Commander’s mother?” James asked incredulously.

“Once or twice,” Kaidan admitted, a little awkwardly. “When we were kids, at BAaT, she came to visit Billie - er, Commander Shepard,” he corrected himself with a sideways glance at the deck officer. “And then after she graduated from the Villa, at the ceremony on Arcturus.”

“Twice in fourteen years,” Sybilla joked. “Nearly as close to her as I am. Do you think this dinner invitation might have been for you?” Liara could feel her partner’s arm twitch ever so slightly against her, could feel the simmering beneath the surface. She gave her a gentle, reassuring squeeze.

The Captain’s private observation deck was a spherical room midship of the long, straight-backed dreadnought, its ceiling a glass-paned solarium exposed to the breathtaking vistas of the stars above and around. The floor was a cunningly-painted replica of a starship’s galactic map, with each system and each cluster painstakingly labelled. The walls were adorned with what appeared to be priceless relics of human military history; several archaic flags, a number of ornamental officer’s sabers, a stand of what Liara recognized as primitive gunpowder firearms, a marble bust of a woman wearing a crested helmet, holding aloft an owl. Low bookcases that ran all around the circular chamber’s diameter contained books on history, mathematics, poetry, pre-spaceflight navigation, theoretical physics - and that was what Liara could spot at a quick glance. A beautifully-carved mahogany desk sat just offset the floor-map, data-pads and computer console arranged _just_ so. A brass plate proudly read “Captain H. Shepard,” facing outward.

Captain Hannah Shepard rose from behind the desk, her focus still predominantly on her console, and Liara immediately saw that the photos she had found while researching her bondmate’s mother did not do her justice. She was fit and spry, her frame tall and athletic like her daughter, her eyes piercing and calculating, her face only just starting to show signs of finally, grudgingly ceding to age and wear. Though she unsurprisingly did not share Sybilla’s oft-broken nose, they shared the same hawkish profile, the same freckled nose-bridge. She looked to have been born in a dress uniform, all clean lines and polished gold ornamentation, worn with a quiet confidence that radiated outward from the woman, defying challenge or disobedience. Liara found herself standing slightly straighter, unconsciously correcting her posture, rooted in place by even the briefest of gazes by this powerful, proud woman, as imposing as any asari matriarch.

Sybilla snapped to attention with the precision and grace of a color-bearer in a military parade, and Kaidan and James followed suit a half-heartbeat later - a half-heartbeat late, judging by Hannah’s unimpressed expression. Those piercing eyes returned to the console screen. Sybilla, Kaidan and James all remained as unmoving as statues. Seconds ticked into eternity as the elder Shepard casually and deliberately finished glancing over whatever report she had been reading before even acknowledging her only daughter. Liara wanted to shudder from the chill of it, but felt frozen by her very presence, like a fieldmouse trapped in the eyes of a hunting hawk. Finally, the Captain straightened and returned the salute.

“As you were.”

The three human soldiers stood at ease but not in the least relaxed. Liara dared to exhale, slightly. _Goddess,_ she thought, even the voice in her mind cowed. _She is terrifying!_

Captain Shepard rounded her desk to stand before her daughter, and for a very short moment that seemed almost comical in hindsight, Liara imagined the two women might embrace. Instead, the mother eyed her daughter up and down with a slow, deliberate glance, her eyes fixated on the row of medals upon her breast. She didn’t even seem to register Liara’s existence, seemed to barely acknowledge the presence of Kaidan or James. 

“A Nova Cluster, a Silver Dagger, a Star of Sur’Kesh, and a Thessian Crescent,” the Captain’s voice was like frost creeping up a window on a winter’s night. “You wear these… awards… alongside your Star of Terra?”

“I am a Council Spectre, ma’am,” Sybilla said evenly. If the mother was ice, the daughter was the simmering haze of water, just before it reached boiling point. “I represent both the Systems Alliance _and_ the Citadel.”

“You are an Alliance soldier, aboard an Alliance vessel, wearing an Alliance uniform,” Captain Shepard said in a tone that brooked no response.

“Yes ma’am.” Sybilla stared straight ahead. Another eternity of silence.

“Major Alenko. I understand congratulations are in order,” she said suddenly, turning her gaze towards Kaidan. “The _second_ human appointed a Council Spectre, as I understand?” The way she annunciated _second_ made it as clear as the glass of her observation deck her opinion of both Spectres, and the significance of Kaidan’s accomplishments.

“Yes ma’am. Thank you, ma’am,” His discomfort was palpable. Liara wanted to wince on his behalf.

“And you must be Lieutenant Vega,” she acknowledged James with the tiniest of nods. “I understand your name was put forward for sponsorship to the Interplanetary Combatives Training program. I would offer my congratulations to yourself, as well, though I suppose your training in the program won’t officially begin until _after_ we’ve re-occupied Earth, will it?”

“Um, no, ma’am,” James gulped. “It’s all, uh, very informal at the moment, ma’am. Commander Shepard has agreed to act as my training officer, until-”

“I wasn’t aware a direct superior _could_ act as a training officer for the Interplanetary Combatives Training program,” the Captain interjected with an ever-so-slightly cocked eyebrow. “How… unofficial.” Vega’s mouth worked soundlessly for a second.

And then, that predatory emerald gaze was fixated on Liara.

 _You are Matriarch Benezia’s daughter,_ she reminded herself, fighting against every instinct to look away, seizing a tight grip on the fluttering in her chest, the churning in her belly. _You are not a frightened, hapless graduate student. You are not a mouse. You are asari, you are strong and proud and capable. You are worthy._

“Doctor T’Soni, I presume?” Captain Shepard inquired, her voice oddly neutral. _Sybilla’s first words to me,_ Liara thought as if through a fog. She realized the Captain had extended a hand towards her, and as much by instinct as anything accepted her handshake, willing her hand not to tremble. The elder Shepard’s hand was smooth and strong like her daughters’, enveloped Liara’s own hand in much the same way. The sensation was as disquieting as her bondmate’s touch was comforting.

“A pleasure to finally make your acquaintance,” Liara fought to keep her voice even. She looked Captain Shepard square in the eye, felt that probing green glance, every bit as searching and knowing as an asari mind-meld. She met her lover’s mother’s gaze, took it in stride, and did not falter. And did not falter. And did not falter.

“The pleasure is mine,” Captain Shepard answered smoothly. “When Admiral Hackett assigned the Orizaba to overseeing the Crucible construction program, I had your research logs from the Mars Archives sent over. A truly fascinating project, to be sure - a pity we could not have begun construction earlier, perhaps had more forewarning as to the extent of this invasion we now face.”

“I, too, wish that the Citadel Council, and the Alliance, and indeed my own asari Republics had heeded Sybilla’s warnings two years ago.” She refused to flinch, marveled at her own audacity to use her bondmate's first name, her private name, in the presence of her mother. “So many lives could have been saved.”

“On that we agree,” Captain Shepard nodded once. “Still, it is… fortunate that you were allowed access to the Archives when you were. It is not often that non-government-affiliated private citizens of the asari Republics are granted leave to study foundational Alliance military technology, even in emergency capacity. Nearly as rare as allowing that same asari unrestricted movement and access to the class leader of a highly-classified experimental stealth frigate during a time of war.” Her eyes flickered towards Sybilla. She abruptly released Liara’s hand, turning away from the four of them and turning those raptor’s eyes toward the stars. “You should know I have petitioned to the Admiralty Board - what remains of it, at any rate - a full audit of the extranational presence aboard the Normandy.”

“Too far,” Sybilla hissed. Her mother tilted her head backwards; her posture another idiosyncratic trait of these Shepard women.

“Excuse me?”

“Too far,” Sybilla repeated, louder. “Your reach exceeds your grasp, as usual, _Captain_ ,” and Liara stifled a gasp at the venom in her voice. “My naval rank may be Commander, but the position the Citadel Council - the same Citadel Council that the Alliance, that humanity has sworn itself to - has bestowed upon me is _Spectre_. That’s Special Tactics and Reconnaissance. _Special_. As in, I decide - not the Alliance, not the Council, _I_ decide - who belongs on _my_ ship, and who doesn’t. And as long as the Council continues to uphold that status, my decision? Is _incontestable._ ”

If earlier silences between the two Shepards had seemed tense, the one that stretched before them now skirted the edge of lethal. Both women stood in near mirrored poses, one set of emerald eyes fixated on the infinite beyond, the other boring into her mother’s back. Both sets of shoulders were stock still, both sets of hands swung lightly, loosely at their sides. Liara had seen Sybilla angry before, had seen her quietly seethe in frustration at the inaction of bureaucracy, had seen her measured eruption in the heat of a close-quarters battle. This was something so far beyond either it frightened her; she looked like she was about to unleash her biotics unwillingly, looked like if she’d had a weapon to hand she would use it.

At long last, it was the elder Shepard who turned. Her face was calculatingly neutral, dispassionate, sliding over her daughter and her companions with disinterest before returning to the same console-screen she had been reading when they entered. “Your vessel requires re-fuelling and re-supply; food, ammunition, medical supplies, and you will need to vent your drive-core safely. Dinner will be served at oh-eighteen-hundred.” The Captain’s voice was flat and toneless and brooked no response, only acknowledgement, only compliance.

Sybilla straightened to attention and snapped a salute, as precise as if she were on parade. In a way, it seemed to Liara that she was, and her heart wept for her bondmate. James and Kaidan, all but bullied into silence, mimicked their Commander’s salute.

“Dismissed.”


	2. Work That Matters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> James lightens the mood on an awkward elevator ride. Liara shares her fondest memories with her bondmate in solidarity and support. Captain Hannah asks Liara to make an important choice.

"So…"

James broke what had been a long, uncomfortable silence as he, Sybilla, Kaidan and Liara descended into the bowls of the Orizaba. The crew elevator was not as slow as the ones on the Citadel had been all those years ago, Liara reflected, but the tense, nervous awkwardness of the ride reminded her of those early days. Only this time, Kaidan was studiously studying his dress shoes, instead of asking well-meaning if awkward questions about Thessia. Sybilla had not spoken since they had left her mother's observation chamber; clearly did not trust herself to speak. Liara clung to her arm, reading her partner's mood and need, simply providing her a physical reminder of support, of compassion. Every few moments, she could feel her bondmate lean into her for a second or two; a wordless, heartfelt acknowledgement and appreciation.

"Doc, good news for you, at least," Vegas was saying now. His voice was suspiciously innocent, his face scrupulously devoid of guile. 

"What good news?" Liara could feel Sybilla tense up again, could feel Kaidan holding in a groan. She kept her voice neutral, with some effort.

"Now that you've seen her mom, at least you know Lola's still going to be smokin' hot when she's like, seventy, or whatever," James said with a placid sincerity that seemed to instantly ease the tension in the elevator. "I mean… damn. No offense, but she's _fit_. I gotta see her workout routine. Does she wake up doing squats?"

"Vega-!" Kaidan coughed, eyes nearly bulging, lips pressed so tightly together they were turning white, to conceal the helpless smile spreading across his face. Liara could feel Sybilla twitch against her, and saw the fury in her eyes fading, replaced with rising amusement. She was chewing the inside of her cheek, and her own lips were curling slightly at the corners.

"Am I wrong? You're gonna tell me I'm wrong? Back me up here, K," he elbowed the Major in the ribs, eliciting a snort. “That whole ‘line us up against it and interrogate us one by one’ routine? I was almost as turned on as I was terrified. Like staring down the barrel of a really sexy gun. No offense, Lola.”

A small sound escaped Sybilla's nose. Her shoulders shuddered slightly, and Liara could see her struggling vainly to not burst out laughing. Relief, and warmth, and a little embarrassment flooded through her in roughly equal measure. She didn't always understand or appreciate human humor, but couldn't help at marvel how skillfully James had found the words to lighten the mood.

“Try that routine when you’re a teenager,” Kaidan retorted dryly. “Makes it really awkward to look your best friend in the eye when you’re trying not to stare at her mother’s legs.”

It was as if a dam burst; all three humans doubled over in wild, tension-relieving, full-throated laughter, clutching sides and wiping eyes. “You’re sick,” Vega gasped, slapping Kaidan on the shoulder. “A sick, sick man.”

“How am I the sick one?” Kaidan protested. “I was just a regular, red-blooded, slightly sheltered teenager!”

“I hate both of you so much,” Sybilla heaved, eyes twinkling, her face a familiar, lopsided grin. Liara felt her shift her weight, felt her lean into her again, and couldn’t help herself from wrapping her arms around her bondmate’s waist, luxuriating in that warmth and closeness. She felt a strong arm circle around her shoulder and squeeze. “You okay?”

_Worrying about me, after dealing with such callousness from her only surviving family,_ Liara thought, feeling both a twinge of sadness and a surge of love for her partner. By way of answer, she took Sybilla’s hand, peeled off a dress glove, and traced her fingers lightly across her bondmate’s palm, looking inquisitively at her. 

“Show you?” 

As it always did, a thrill crackled through her when those glowing green eyes indicated her consent before expectantly sliding closed, when Sybilla freely and so willingly opened her mind to Liara’s gentle neural ‘knock,’ when she bared her soul to her. Liara felt her eyes gloss over black, felt the tingling, electric out-of-body sensation of their consciousnesses merge, as the elevator and James and Kaidan and Hannah Shepard and the Reaper War and the universe faded into the background, as the need to distinguish between ‘Liara’ and ‘Sybilla’ faded into the aether. Until there was nothing but the two of them, until the two of them were one, seamlessly completing each other, as if they were meant to.

As soon as she felt her bondmate’s consciousness merge with her own, Liara flooded her mind with an outpouring of love, of affirmation, of affection. She conjured up her favourite memories of the two of them, memories that warmed her on those nights they had to remain apart, memories she would treasure until the end of her days. Of the first time they locked eyes, deep within a Prothean ruin on Therum, of the way her breath caught at feeling Sybilla’s gaze upon her. Of the way her strong arms had caught her so effortlessly when she tumbled free of the field of force she’d been suspended in, how close they’d been together, how she’d noticed the tiny birthmark just beneath her bottom lip, curled into a lopsided grin. Memories of finding books of romantic poetry left on her pillow, with favourite passages bookmarked. Of Sybilla striding onto the CIC, dishevelled, mud-splattered, triumphant, having spent half a day swimming through a methane-soaked bog to pluck her a handful of cerulean flowers that she’d insisted she’d seen through the forward screen of the Mako, days earlier on mission. Memories of walks through the Citadel’s Presidium, of stolen kisses in quiet corners, of watching, spellbound, as she played her the violin in the private darkness of her cabin. 

Of the words “marriage, old age, and a lot of little blue children,” words that would always and forever make her want to weep with unbridled joy.

_Yours,_ she sent, along with an image of the two of them, eyes closed, arms wrapped around each other, mouths crushed together, kissing softly, passionately beneath a brilliant canopy of stars, a universe that was theirs and theirs alone. _Yours forever. Love you. Love you love you love you._

_Yours forever, Bluebird,_ she felt Sybilla’s mind tenderly caress her own in response. _Only yours. Love you love you love you._

  
  


Sybilla, predictably, had been called away to oversee the Normandy’s re-supply almost immediately after the elevator had stopped, mobbed by a gaggle of junior officers bearing data-pads requiring the attention of Commander Shepard and Commander Shepard alone. She’d blown Liara an apologetic kiss, promised that she’d make time for them before dinner, and then had very nearly been carried down the halls of the Orizaba. James and Kaidan, still laughing, had followed, offering good-natured (and unhelpful) advice to their suddenly-overwhelmed superior.

Leaving Liara alone to wander the Orizaba.

Or at least, mostly alone. A pair of uniformed ratings had been trailing her since she stepped onboard the ship. They stayed a respectful distance, apparently ordered only to observe, not interfere, but made little attempts to hide that they’d obviously been tasked with escorting their asari ‘guest’ wherever she wandered. Not that Liara wasn’t confident in her ability to pick up on a tail, had they bothered to conceal themselves - two years as an information broker on Illium and six months slipping into the skin of the legendary Shadow Broker had taught her much about the arts of espionage, counter-intelligence, and clandestine surveillance. At least they didn’t try to talk to her.

After the day’s rather dramatic beginnings, she was somewhat glad for the opportunity for solitude. Never an overly social person even before the Reaper War, before Saren, before her ill-fated dig on Therum, she was most comfortable either with a book in hand or exploring an Armali lakeside, a Presidium garden-terrace, or even a quiet corner in a library or office. If she couldn’t spend her hours in the company of her bondmate, alone suited Liara T’Soni just fine.

After some time spent exploring the too-pristine halls, attuning herself to the very subtle hum of the massive ship’s equally massive warp drive, and marvelling at the crew’s clockwork precision and discipline, she had found herself a quiet corner of a small observation deck somewhere starboard of where they’d boarded. The boiling violet nebula swirled and churned beyond the inch-thick glass separating her and eternity. Somewhere out there, in a location so secret that not even the crew of the Normandy knew precisely where, the Crucible was being built, a rushed assembly job on a superweapon more than 50,000 years old. Their last, best, and most desperate hope.

“Did you enjoy your unguided tour, Doctor T’Soni?”

It took every ounce of willpower to not react to the sudden voice and presence of Captain Hannah Shepard; apparently just as adept as her daughter at appearing suddenly and seemingly from out of nowhere. _I_ hate _it when she does that,_ Liara thought furiously, reeling at the ability of these six-foot-tall warrior-women to step so lightly, so silently.

“The Orizaba is a beautiful ship,” she said, and meant it.

“She is,” the Captain agreed, and Liara was surprised to hear a faint note of… sentimentality? in the woman’s voice. “Pride of the Fifth Fleet. Did you know, before all this -” she gestured, a broad, sweeping motion that seemed to encapsulate the whole of creation. “- before all this, they wanted to decommission her? She’s first-gen Kilimanjaro-class. They called her an ‘aged man-o-war.’” Her derisive snort informed Liara precisely what she thought of that. “As well call _me_ an ‘aged man-o-war.’”

Strong, calloused hands ran almost lovingly along the railing in front of the windowpane-wall. “The Orizaba is not old, no-one would call her old. She has a bluff bow, lovely lines… She is a fine ship; sturdy, stiff, and fast. Very fast, if she’s well-handled. No, she’s not old.” A heavy hand patted the railing with something resembling affection. 

“She’s in her prime.”

Liara, unsure whether or not Shepard was referring to the ship or herself, could only nod. There was something at play here, that she couldn't quite follow.

"You are the first lover my Sybilla has ever brought 'home' to meet me, you know," Captain Shepard said abruptly, a faint hint of what might be amusement or what might be disappointment threading through her voice. The change in topic and tone nearly gave Liara whiplash - _that was calculated,_ she thought, _that had to be calculated_ , forced her hands to sit still and maintain her composure against the drumming in her chest.

“That is her problem,” the Captain mused. “One of them, at any rate. She still craves approval, acceptance. She needs to be liked.” She clicked her tongue, and not for the first or last time Liara marvelled at how similar their mannerisms were. “I don’t feel any particular need to be liked.”

“You’re her mother,” Liara blurted out, shocking herself with her outburst but unable to restrain herself any longer. “Of course she needs your approval. She’s wanted to _be_ you her whole life.”

“She doesn’t want to _be_ me,” Captain Shepard barked a bitter laugh. “She wants to _beat_ me. It’s how I raised her; to be strong, to see hardship as obstacles to be overcome, not intimidated by. Not even her own mother.”

“Is that why you cast her out?” Liara challenged.

The Captain rolled her eyes. “Oh, please. She _chose_ to lie about her age and enlist at sixteen. Of course I was angry, but had she washed out, I would have hardly allowed her to live on the street. And at any rate, our… estrangement… was the best thing at the time for her. I had been Executive Officer to the Admiral of Second Fleet. I had won a Star of Terra at Shanxi. Alliance brass had just made me the youngest woman to command a carrier in the history of the navy, for God’s sake. My star was rising. Who would ever have taken my daughter seriously as a soldier, as an officer? Accusations of special treatment and nepotism would have hounded her her entire career.” She shook a finger in Liara’s face. “And she knows it, whether or not she is willing to acknowledge it."

Liara shook her head in disbelief. "You cannot truly believe that estrangement from your daughter was 'what was best.'" Her hands trembled, and not from fear this time. Anger, anger and sorrow churned within her, swirled around her, and she fought bitterly to maintain a calm center in the midst of that storm. Fought to keep her own feelings surrounding her own mother at bay.

"If you had chosen to follow your own mother into politics, Doctor - how might _you_ have been treated among your peers?" Captain Shepard sniffed. "Would the asari have judged you upon your own merits? Would you have confidence that your own advancement was born from your talent and skill? Would your counsel have been heeded in spite of your family name, or because of it?" She crossed her arms and struck yet another very-Sybilla pose. "When they looked at you, would they recognize _you_ , Liara T'Soni, or would they merely be looking at a mirror held up to Matriarch Benezia?"

It was Liara's turn to sniff. "Do you imagine that _ever_ stopped - whether my mother and I were close or not? Do you imagine I was ever considered anything more than the Matriarch's daughter by my peers at the University of Serrice? By the asari Republic? By your own Alliance?" She tilted her head towards the Captain, eyes burning. "We do not cease living in our mother's shadows simply because they choose to not acknowledge us."

They glared at each other for what felt like a long time; both straight-backed, fiery-eyed, jaws set, unwilling to back down from the other. Finally, it was Captain Shepard who relented, if only slightly. Her eyes softened, ever so slightly, and her tone dipped. “You are a good fit for her, Doctor. I am glad to see she’s done something adult, for once.”

_Goddess, she has been trying to poke and prod me to see what comes out this entire time,_ Liara thought with a mixture of frustration and fury. _Probing for weaknesses, like I were an enemy to be overcome_. She had felt and seen the same thought processes in her bondmate, had felt her regret and her inner turmoil over the way her soldier’s eye approached every scenario, no matter how benign, as if she were wading into a firefight. Through her anger, Liara felt a pang of sorrow for this Shepard. For both Shepards.

“I am… pleased… you approve,” Liara murmured.

The corners of Captain Shepard’s lips twitched. “I didn’t say that.”

_Goddess. Did she just tell a_ joke?

They sat in a pleasantly awkward silence for a few moments, the tension between them loosening ever so slightly as the nebula swirled around them and that glittering canopy of stars spread out like they were a boat, adrift in a starry ocean.

“It would be easier if it were not so,” Captain Shepard said, finally, breaking the silence in a tone more akin to the coldness of their earlier meeting than the almost kindliness of a moment ago. “These are dark times, Doctor T’Soni, and they are liable to grow darker before they get lighter. A trillion lives hang in the balance of our actions as we complete this Crucible of yours. And that is why…” Shepard sighed, turning towards Liara once more, and she could see the walls had come up again, high and strong and seamless. “And that is why I would like you to step down as the Normandy’s science and intelligence officer and focus your talents on the Crucible program.”

The words struck her like a blow to the gut; the callous, cruelty of them, of what she was demanding. Of what she was asking her to sacrifice. “I let her slip away once,” Liara whispered. “I will never willingly do so again.”

“If you love her - truly, truly love her, you must.” Captain Shepard’s voice was the tolling of a doomsday bell. “You are a distraction that she cannot afford. There is too much at stake, girl.”

“Girl?” She scarcely felt herself rising, scarcely felt the swirl of biotic energy envelop her on a rage-influenced reflex. “My _name_ is Liara T’Soni! And what Sybilla and I share is more than a… ‘distraction!’” She took an angry step forward. “I trust her. I love her. With all my heart and soul, with everything that is and will forever be. And if this _is_ the end, for us, for all of us - this time I will be by her side. This time I won’t be sent away while she runs off to die, alone, _again_ , for your stupid Alliance.”

“What if _you_ died?”

Liara’s mouth worked soundlessly for a moment, her rage faltering. “What if-”

“What. If. You. Died?” The Captain’s eyes burned into her, brighter and more terrible than a Reaper’s gaze, her eyes filled with the implacable unmelting chill of a glacier. Every syllable cracked like a whip, her voice filled with a terrible calm. “What if Sybilla is forced to choose between defeating the Reapers, and saving you? Could she do it? What if you were captured, Indoctrinated, sent back to kill her, those lovely long fingers of yours reaching for her throat? Could she put you down?” She leaned in, until her glower was all Liara could see, until it blotted out all light. “What if you died? Could she go on without you? Could she complete her mission?”

Her voice dropped to a low hiss. “She will kill for you, and she has died for you… but could she live without you?”

This time it was Liara who was forced to look away, shame and guilt and sorrow washing over blinding fury. Her eyes brimmed with tears. Couldn’t speak, couldn’t swallow. It had felt like years since she’d slept properly, haunted by Sovereign’s shadow in her dreams, by Sybilla’s death, by the Shadow Broker’s monstrous silhouette, by the prospect of complete annihilation they all faced. All she wanted was for this nightmare to be finally over, for there to be a galaxy left after they were done saving it - if they could save it. She needed Sybilla’s arms around her, needed that comforting, fearless, fierce love, that unshakeable presence, that unconditional affection and affirmation. Even that, it seemed, would be taken from her before the end.

She felt a pair of strong hands grip her shoulders, feeling at once familiar and alien, but feeling a strange sort of comfort within them. “It isn’t fair,” Captain Shepard whispered, her voice oddly gentle. “ _Life_ isn’t fair. Some of us are forced to sacrifice too much on the behalf of so many others, to give and give and give until there’s nothing left. _I_ know what that’s like, Liara T’Soni.

“When I met Basheer… He was so unlike anyone I’d ever met. He was passionate, and confident. His intelligence shocked me, humbled me. When he spoke, when he looked at me... it was as if the whole world ceased to matter.” She sighed. “And that was the problem. I was the XO of one of our earliest exploratory fleets. Every mission could have been our last - we had no idea what we were doing, where we were going, what the mass relays were or where they would take us. I realized that I couldn’t do my job properly, if I was too focused on coming home to him.

“I knew I had to choose, between my personal happiness and my work; work that I believed mattered. Work that I _have_ to believe matters. I had to choose between Basheer and the Alliance, and I chose the Alliance.” Her face, softened by her sorrowful, pleasant reverie, suddenly hardened. “And do you know how that Alliance repaid me, for my sacrifice? For turning my back on that beautiful, kind, compassionate man? I gave them thirty-three years of dutiful service and they gave me back an empty coffin and a folded flag. I gave them my life and they _took my daughter from me_.”

Liara could feel Captain Shepard’s hands tremble against her shoulders, could feel the fury and the helplessness and the bitterness churn in her voice. Through her own sadness she couldn’t help but to marvel at the strength of this woman, of the resolve. In a way, James had been right earlier: it was like looking at a vision of an older Sybilla; a Sybilla ground down by misogyny, by fear-driven nationalism and the horrors of war and the unknown, but mostly by the isolation of command, of responsibility. Hannah Shepard was a Sybilla that lived and died almost entirely for that Earth Systems Alliance uniform and what it was supposed to represent.

“And I’d do it again,” the Captain whispered. “Because a trillion lives hang in the balance. Because, Liara T’Soni, _our work matters_. More than our feelings and our needs, our wants, our ambitions, our hopes and dreams. More than any one of us - you, me, her.” She inhaled and exhaled deeply. “You could do great work on the Crucible, Liara T’Soni. Important work. More suited to your skillsets than close-quarters engagements alongside Alliance marines. And neither of you would ever again be forced to calculate that terrible equation, that most difficult question of ‘what do I prioritize? The mission? Or the woman I love?’

“It isn’t an easy choice. And I am under no illusions it is a fair one. But life is frequently neither of those things.”

Through closed eyes, Liara could feel the elder Shepard let go of her shoulders. Her head hung, feeling drained, feeling weak. Her mind was clouded with doubts, and her heart felt heavy within her chest. _Is there nothing this war won’t take from me?_

“Think on it, Liara T’Soni. But not too long. After dinner, I need to know whether or not I am escorting you to the Crucible.”

And with that, Hannah left her to sit, alone, surrounded by stars that no longer seemed full of life and hope and warmth, but seemed to stare out at her in silent judgement.


	3. A Future Many May Never See

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kaidan offers some brotherly advice. Sybilla extolls the virtues of the M7 Lancer. Liara fears for a future.

Liara couldn’t guess how long she wandered the halls of the Orizaba, after her conversation with Shepard.  _ The other Shepard _ , she thought numbly.  _ The anti-Shepard _ . Her finger listlessly trailed along the wall as she trudged. It was cold, distant. Faintly, from some inner depth, there was a vibration, the barest hint of warmth, like a mirage in the desert - buried behind an impenetrable, indefatiguable sheath of frozen iron, a dizzying, insurmountable barrier.  _ Just like her Captain _ .

“What if you died?”

It hadn’t been the first time the maiden had considered it, she told herself. Every desperate firefight, every inbound Reaper signal before they were forced to make a quick FTL jump out of system, there was a chance that one or both of them could be hurt or killed. Every since Therum the pair of them had courted death together, until the life-threatening scenarios they seemed to face daily barely phased Liara anymore. They had never seemed to phase Sybilla. If the presence of death had become an old friend to the asari, the human was very nearly wedded to it.

“What if Sybilla is forced to choose between defeating the Reapers, and saving you? Could she do it?”

_ Is she trying to martyr herself? _ Even without the meld, Liara could read the strain on her bondmate, the lines in her face, the anguish in her eyes at each day’s new casualty totals, the way she avoided sleep, fled from it. On the few times she had been able to force her bondmate to rest her battered body for a handful of hours, she had tossed and turned so fitfully, had gasped and whimpered while caught in the grip of such terrible nightmares that Liara had held her tortured lover to her breast and wept in frustration and fear, feeling helpless, feeling unable to help the woman who was killing herself to help so many.

“What if you were captured, Indoctrinated, sent back to kill her, those lovely long fingers of yours reaching for her throat? Could she put you down?”

_ And what about you? _ A small voice in the back of her mind chided her.  _ What if  _ you  _ died? You only ever think of death in terms of Sybilla. Fear it, dread it, expect it. _ It was true, she realized with some shame, with a chill. The way Sybilla threw herself into conflict, into danger, as if death was assured. It was a warrior’s mentality, she knew - her mother’s commando coterie had shared Sybilla’s philosophies, had explained to her that warriors often contextualized their own death as an assumption to erase hesitation, to erase fear. 

“What if you died? Could she go on without you? Could she complete her mission?”

So what did Sybilla fear? What caused her to avoid closing her eyes like a plague, motivated her to accept task after task, no matter how arduous or trifling, simply to stay active? What fear caused her to writhe in the night as if she were caught in a web?

_ You know what she fears, _ the small voice chided again.  _ Death. Not hers, but yours. Did you ever ask, T’Soni, why she takes point on every ground mission you accompany her on, despite your barriers being the stronger? Did you ever ask, T’Soni, why she throws herself with such reckless abandon at her enemies, why she is so insistent on drawing their fire towards herself? Did you ever ask, T’Soni, why it is she watches you so closely, checks up on you so frequently? To see that you have eaten, that you have slept. Fear, T’Soni. Love, yes, but also fear. _

“She will kill for you, and she has died for you… but could she live without you?”

_ You know what you would do - what you  _ did _ \- when you lost her, T’Soni. You went from a Matriarch’s daughter to the head of a powerful asari Clan. You went from a frightened xenoarchaeologist to the Shadow Broker. You lost the love of your life and changed. Hardened. Darkened. _

_ What would the Hero of Elysium do if her bondmate was killed? What lengths would the first human Spectre go to seek vengeance for her slain bondmate? What depths would Commander Shepard sink to, in the wake of her lover’s death? _

_ What would Sybilla become? _

“Hey, Doc, you… you okay?”

Kaidan’s soft, measured voice tore her out of her reverie. She glanced around at the empty hallway, deep within the bowels of the ship, somewhere. The human’s brow was furrowed with concern, his eyes crinkled with consternation. She realized she had no idea where she was, what time it was. Her eyes felt puffy, her nose runny, her throat raw.  _ I must look a fright. _

“Billie sent me to come find you. Nobody’d seen you for hours. What happened?”

“Captain Shepard and I had a…” Liara gestured with frustration, her voice still shaking slightly. “... conversation.”  _ To say the least. What do I tell Sybilla?  _ How _ do I tell Sybilla? _

Comprehension flooded the handsome human’s features. “Aaaaaah. If it’s anything like the last private ‘conversation’ I had with Captain Shepard, you have my condolences.”

“She is  _ always _ like this?”

Kaidan leaned against the wall next to her, loosening the buttons on his dress jacket. “Only to anyone Billie seems like she might care about. Captain Shepard is, uh, ‘guarded’ about personal relationships. She considers them a distraction.”

Liara mimicked the Major, dropping her weight against the cold steel of the wall with a huff. She folded her arms over her breasts, her own brow furrowing. “I grow weary of being considered a  _ distraction. _ ”

“You aren’t-”

“Once you would have agreed with the Captain,” the maiden challenged, with a little more acid in her tone than she intended. “Our crew once held me in the same suspicion as this crew does now. The Alliance has  _ never _ fully trusted me.” She shook her head. “Perhaps they are correct. Perhaps Sybilla would be more focused, better able to fight the Reapers, if… if…”

Kaidan sighed. “She asked you to leave the Normandy, didn’t she.”

Liara stifled a sob.

Kaidan sighed again. “Yeah, I thought so.” He inhaled deeply before reaching out, squeezing her shoulder gently. 

“Listen, Doc… Liara. Do you know when I knew I had been wrong about you?” He didn’t wait for confirmation. “It was pretty early on, on Feros. We’d gotten shot up pretty badly by the geth. You were with the colonists, trying to help Dr. Chakwas where you could, helping to patch up the wounded, get them somewhere safe. Garrus and Tali and Wrex were in a holding position while Ash and Billie and I got set to clear out a tower the geth had fortified. They kept landing more and more of them in there, and we had to clear the thing out if we were going to have any chance saving the colony. Three marines against an army of geth. I wasn’t, ah, optimistic.

“Ash had quoted a line from an old Tennyson poem. Her father’s favourite poet, I think. The Charge of the Light Brigade. It’s about a failed assault, soldiers rushing in to die because of bad intel, following orders to their deaths. Every Alliance marine knows the one line of it.” He closed his eyes, reciting.

“Theirs not to make reply,  
Theirs not to reason why,  
Theirs but to do and die.”

He exhaled. “Yeah. Pretty grim. But Billie… Billie had just shaken her head. She said Tennyson had been a great poet but wasn’t a soldier. She said she knew what she was asking of us, and that they weren’t here just because they were ordered to. She told us to think about  _ why _ we were there, what we were each fighting for, and to fight like hell to get back to it.” His eyes shined with the memory, with pride. With love. Kaidan laughed. “And then she gave us that grin she always does, and asked us if we were trying to live forever, and she charged that damn tower.”

Liara couldn’t help but smile. She’d remembered those terrifying firefights on Feros, so soon after her rescue on Therum. How the geth never seemed to stop coming, how she could barely focus on keeping her barriers up, how she wanted to curl into a ball and scream. How Sybilla had stood -  _ stood _ \- roaring encouragement, bellowing commands, the rifle in her hand like a part of her, as she directed her team, motivated them. Like a leader should.

_ A brassy voice. A lopsided grin. A blood-splattered halo. “What’s the matter, soldier - you trying to live forever?” _

“I thought about my dad, back home on Earth. I thought about how if Saren could bring geth to terrorize Zhu’s Hope, he could send dropships to Vancouver. Nowhere would be safe if that bastard had his way, and we were the only ones that could stop him. Ash later told me she was thinking about her sisters, thinking about geth over Sirona. We never asked what Billie was drawing on to fight for. But even then… even then, I knew she was thinking about you.

“Liara, I’ve known Billie since she was twelve and I was fifteen. And even way back then, as a snot-nosed, skinny little Navy brat, she never backed down from anyone or anything, and she always did what she thought was right, no matter what it cost her. But until she met you…” He was looking at Liara now, those big brown eyes of his that so many of the human crew of the Normandy swooned over entirely focused on her. “Liara, until Billie met you she was still looking for something to fight  _ for _ .

“She’d fight and kill and die for this damn uniform, for the Alliance, for the Council, for the galaxy - but until she met you, Liara T’Soni, until she met you, she didn’t have anything she was fighting to come home to. Until she met you, she didn’t have anything planned for the ‘after’.

Kaidan’s smile had faded a little, and there was a note of sadness in his eyes. He patted her on the shoulder again. “You give her something to hold on to. Something to contextualize what we’re doing, something to remind her of why we’re fighting so hard, sacrificing so much. You remind her that she has someone to come home to.”

Liara swallowed, hard. Her lip trembled. “Why is it everyone seems so insistent on bringing me to tears, today?” she whispered.

Kaidan laughed lightly, wrapping her in a brotherly hug. “Well, Billie’s never cried, to my recollection, so you’re on double duty now, Doctor T’Soni.” The maiden squeezed her human friend back, gratefully, feeling a lightening in her heart, in her shoulders. She sniffed.

“You’re a good friend, Kaidan Alenko. To Sybilla, and to me.”

“Yeah, well, don’t tell anyone,” he chuckled. “It’ll ruin my mystique. Come on, let’s go find Billie.”

  
  


Sybilla, unsurprisingly, was belowdecks, having apparently traded a crowd of junior officers and ensigns for a crowd of leatherneck marines and ratings. As Liara and Kaidan descended the cargo elevator, they spotted the tall woman and her new entourage amidst the weapon benches and shelves of a truly massive shipboard armory. Row after row of all manner of weaponry and armor were on display, or laid out for maintenance or modification. Liara spotted James’ hulking form nearly  _ running _ from bench to bench, overwhelmed and overjoyed, like an overstimulated child surrounded by rows of toys. Her smile widened when she imagined Garrus here, likely having a similar reaction.

“... can’t  _ seriously _ be taking the Lancer over the Valkyrie, c’mon, Commander…”

Sybilla seemed to be in an animated discussion with the armory officer over the finer points of two particular models of Alliance-manufacture assault rifle, while groups of supporters had formed around either. The weapon the armory officer was hefting Liara recognized as the preferred weapon of Major Alenko; a sleek and much more modern design than the old, battered weapon that Sybilla was most often associated with. Liara recalled someone having once told her that Sybilla’s preferred rifle dated back to the First Contact War. This was relayed to her in a scandalized tone; humans, like salarians, liked everything on the cutting edge. For an asari like Liara, building things to last only made sense. She supposed that such a mindset would set her apart from the much shorter-lived humans.  _ Just another way we are two of the same mindset, _ Liara thought with some amusement.

"The N-7 Valkyrie is a precision instrument of war," the armory officer was insisting. "State of the art, straight out of the Arcturus War College, and hand-tested by the latest batch of Interplanetary Combatives Academy graduates as part of the Future Weapons program. It's the superior armament in every single simulation and field test; better weight distribution, better heat consumption, increased rate of fire, superior penetration and stopping power..."

"Ever tried shooting one of those while it's covered in mud?" Sybilla's eyes flashed. "I can blind a batarian at four hundred meters with this Lancer after feeding it backwards through a thresher maw." She affectionately patted the weapon. "You can fill it with sand, drive a Mako over one, drop it from low orbit, fire it underwater, use it as a club… She'll never let you down, not ever."

"Tell that to the poor quartermaster that has to clean and maintain your rifle after you get back from the field, Lola," James shouted, half-buried behind a bench as he hefted what looked like a weapon built for a krogan.

"Like you'd know, Mr. Vega," she retorted brassily. "You're too busy playing with your  _ own _ guns to touch anyone else's." The armory crew chortled.

"Hey, I touch lots of other people's guns," James protested. More laughter.

"Kaidan, settle a bet," Sybilla spotted them coming down on the lift. "Team Lancer or Team Valky-" she trailed off upon spotting Liara, her face clouding over with concern, nearly pushing through the ratings and deck staff to get to her. One hand immediately reached out to find Liara's. The other was still on the rifle. "Birdie? You okay?"

"Yes," she smiled wanly. "Despite what I may look like. Your mother and I had a… discussion regarding my continued presence aboard the Normandy."

Sybilla's grip on the rifle tightened, and Liara saw murder in her eye. "Truly, love," Liara added hastily, placing a gentle hand on her arm. "I will be fine."

"She has no right to treat you like this," Sybilla hissed, her countenance dark. "No right," she repeated, but to Liara's relief, she had lessened her grip on her weapon.

"Why don't you put that down," the maiden asked, looking askance at the rifle, "and we'll talk? I believe you promised to find time for me before dinner…" A slight smile crept over her face, and she was rewarded with a matching one on her human.

"I'm fine, too," Kaidan teased.

Sybilla scoffed and pushed the rifle into his chest. “Can you keep an eye on James? He’s likely to cause a diplomatic incident if we leave him here, around all this hardware, unsupervised.”

Kaidan made a show of sighing loudly and rolling his head back. “Fine, but you owe me a bottle of something nice. Or a six-pack of something cheap.”

The elevator began to rumble back up. “Put it on my tab,” she called, blowing him a kiss.

  
  


Flushed and giggling, Liara had allowed herself to be very nearly chased into an unoccupied briefing room on a middle deck, Sybilla pursuing her with mischievous eyes and her familiar lopsided half-smile. The maiden scarcely had time to wave her omni-tool at the door before her human had pulled her close, wrapped those strong arms around her, and pulled her into a lingering kiss that left her eyes sliding closed and her head spinning. It was all she could do to not melt into Sybilla’s chest, as tingling ripples of desire ran to the tips of her crest, kindling a fire in her. She could feel her lover’s hands caressing the back of her neck, could feel her own hands, almost unbidden, running up the curve of Sybilla’s hips, her sleek, muscular sides, sliding under her jacket...

Sybilla bit down on her bottom lip hard enough to draw a light gasp. She opened her eyes to see her human’s half-lidded gaze filled with an intensity that left her a quivering puddle in her arms. Her breath caught; short, clipped.

“I take it you’re feeling a little better?” Sybilla murmured, nuzzling her neck-folds in a way that was definitely, definitely not helping her maintain focus.

Liara’s eyes narrowed, and she squeezed her human’s hips needfully. “The very moment we are back aboard the Normandy,” she murmured in a low, urgent voice, “I am going to have you wrapped in a singularity bubble for the rest of the evening.”

A playful nip made her weak at the knees. “That will be an interesting spectacle for the bridge crew,” Sybilla laughed lightly.

The maiden exhaled, trying to slow her racing heartbeat, pressing herself against her human as much to rejoice in their closeness as to keep Sybilla’s hands from continuing to torment her. “Particularly when they see what I am going to do to you while you are  _ in _ that bubble.” She took another steadying breath, untangling a set of maddeningly skillful fingers from where they were teasing her crest. “Now behave, love, or  _ we _ are going to be the ones responsible for a diplomatic incident.”

Her incorrigible lover merely found another place to rest her hands. “Perhaps I  _ want _ to cause a diplomatic incident,” she teased, giving Liara another playful nip on the neck-fold. “We’d have to be very quiet, though,” her throaty murmur carried mocking concern as her fingers trailed down the asari’s gown. “My mother is upstairs.”

Suppressing a shiver, Liara took her lover’s hands and held them, trembling more than she would like. “I do not understand the reference, but I believe I understand the implication,” she managed, silencing Sybilla’s further temptations with a slow, soft kiss. “Behave,” she repeated as she drew back, cocking an eyebrow, adding a “for now.”

“For now,” Sybilla agreed with a sigh of mock reluctance. She drew the maiden back closer into her, wrapping her up in a comforting embrace. They were silent for a moment, just enjoying each other’s warmth, each other’s presence. “Did you want to talk about the Captain?”

"Actually, I wanted to talk about us." Liara glanced upwards at the taller woman, giving her another gentle squeeze of assurance.

"Well, that sounds  _ serious _ ," Sybilla breathed, in a passable imitation of a similar exchange.

“I am serious,” the asari smiled in spite of the turmoil inside of her. With some difficulty, and some reluctance, she disentangled their arms from each other before entwining her fingers with those of her lover. “I  _ am _ serious. Sybilla, my love. Twice now, we have started to speak of what happens to us… after. If there is an after.”

“I seem to recall promising you an ‘after,’” Sybilla grinned.

Her cheeks flushed at the memory. “You did. I believe you had mentioned ‘marriage, old age, and a lot of little blue children’?”

Sybilla leaned until their foreheads were touching. “And I meant every word,” she said, her voice so genuine and earnest it took Liara’s breath away. She leaned against her human, closing her eyes to keep them from brimming over in fresh tears.  _ When did I become so weepy? _

“I know you did,” she whispered. “My love. I feel as if I have been selfish. I was so angry with you, when you…” Now she could feel the warm tears flowing down her cheeks. “I was so, so angry. Angry that you could love me so truly, that you could show me what it is like to be loved like this, that you could promise me an ‘after,’ and then that the universe could take you from me.

“I was… I  _ have _ been so caught up in that anger and in the fear that I will lose you again, that I have not thought of how you must feel. How you must fear that same loss. I am so, so sorry, my love. I am so sorry."

Liara squeezed her eyes shut and sank into her human's arms, silently shaking. She clung to Sybilla as if she were drowning.

"Shhhh. Hey, hey," that low, comforting voice murmured. "I've got you. You're safe."

"But what about  _ you _ ?" she wept bitterly. "Who will be there for you, if something happened to me? Who picks  _ you _ up when you fall? Who keeps  _ you _ safe?"

Realization dawned on her, slowly. "If something happened to you… God, I don't even want to…"

"But you must, you  _ must, _ " Liara insisted through a haze of tears. "Please, love. No sweet words, no distractions. I need to know that… if something happened to me, if you had to…" She took a shaky breath, another. "If you had to go on without me… I need to know that you could."

Sybilla was silent for a long time, just holding her, and Liara could feel her torment, her turmoil.  _ What if she can't? _ that sullen voice in the back of her mind chided.  _ What if she couldn't? What if her mother is right? What if you are both being selfish in a time for sacrifice? _

"Before I met you," Sybilla started, "before I fell in love with you, I was lost. The Alliance made me a weapon. War is… all I know, really. I've only started to see the possibilities of… something else, out there. Like a half-forgotten dream, or like something on the horizon, just out of reach. I don't know if I can ever truly put that aside, but… for the first time in my life, some day, that's what I want to do. Something other than this mission, and the next mission."

She sighed and looked down to the asari in her arms, eyes swirling with sorrow and affection in equal measure. "I love you with everything that is me, but I'm a soldier at heart, Liara. If… if something happened to you… then that's what I'd go back to being. Just a soldier. I could go on. I could finish what I’d started. I’d be exactly what the Alliance, and my mother, want me to be. But it would just be onto the next mission, and onto the next, until there was nothing left of me. And now that I’ve seen there can be something else… that scares me. Yeah.”

Liara wrapped her arms around her human and squeezed, squeezed her eyes shut and just allowed holding her, being held by her, to be her entire universe. “I made you promise you would always come back for me,” she whispered. “Hear my promise now, Sybilla Reem Shepard. I will always come back for you. No matter what happens, I am yours.”


	4. Farewell and Into the Inevitable

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sybilla makes a toast (or two). Kaidan reminisces about Virmire. Hannah remembers Basheer differently than Sybilla does. A conclusion.

“Would you do the honors, Commander Shepard?”

Liara sat stiff-backed and somewhat awkwardly between mother and daughter at the head of the long polished oak table, ringed by all the commanding officers of the SSV Orizaba and the Normandy’s own high-ranking deck crew. Blank-faced mess-crew in freshly-pressed whites hovered behind them, bearing bottles wrapped in white linens -  _ elasa, _ Liara observed with some disquiet,  _ Illium elite brand… a coincidence? Is  _ anything _ a coincidence with this woman? _ \- and a truly dazzling collection of highly-polished cutlery was laid out alongside a dinner service that looked to be actual porcelain. It reminded the maiden of still images she’d seen in some of Sybilla’s old books, of human naval traditions from an age where they were still struggling to master the open waters, and had barely begun to dream of the stars. She had grown accustomed to human eccentricities while aboard human vessels, but it was in moments like this that she reflected how strange this species was to her, how alien.

“Of course,” Sybilla said brassily, rising and holding her glass aloft. She stood very nearly at attention, but the rest of the officers at the table did not rise, merely mimicked the raising of her glass with their own. “To spouses and sweethearts,” she spoke in a clear, crisp, somber tone that altogether failed to conceal the rakishness of her expression. “May they never meet.” Liara’s eyes went as wide as the dinner plates.  _ Goddess, is she  _ trying _ to provoke her mother now? _ Appreciative chuckles and guffaws ringed the table, and to the asari’s shock, the other humans - Captain Hannah Shepard included - all but shouted “To spouses and sweethearts!” before very nearly draining their glasses. Sybilla’s emerald wink sent a flush through Liara’s cheeks, and she busied her face behind her fluted elasa glass.

The mess crew moved in near-perfect synchronicity to pour each officer another glass, and then a first course was being served; a shimmering, aromatic soup poured from a white tureen, thick and rich and smelling slightly sweet. There was a deal more animation from the Orizaba officers than what Liara had been expecting, as they conversed and questioned and even jested with James and Kaidan and Sybilla and stole nervous glances her way.

“... out of the Veil like a flood! Hadn’t been seen in three hundred years, and who’s on watch that night but Heidi - Lieutenant Pittman - and I, still nursing the effects of a bottle and a half of Noverian rum…”

“... the turian commander looks me in the eye and says ‘never mind the maneuvers, just go  _ straight _ at them-’”

“ _... five _ asari commandos and one absolutely dazed Corporal Rook, nursing a head wound. The commandos give her back to the duty officer at the hospital… and then one of them slips him a card with her number on it and  _ tells him to tell her to call her when she wakes up! _ ”

“This is… not what I had expected,” Liara admitted in a low voice, leaning close to her bondmate. “I had thought-”

“That navy officer’s dinners were stiff-necked, boring affairs?” Sybilla teased. “You wouldn’t be wrong. This is fairly tame. The last time I was at a dinner, the Admirals of Second and Fourth Fleet were wrestling on the floor. Asari military don’t hold extravagant banquets?”

“We always eat communally,” Liara shrugged, surprising herself with how much she was enjoying the soup. “I have never dined with asari navy, but I imagine it would be much the same as a gathering of Clans: all in a shared space, but gathered in tight-knit smaller groups. This is… not unpleasant, but I am reminded of how individualistic humans are.”

“Major Alenko,” the short, dark woman that had been introduced as Lieutenant Commander Samira Moy, the Orizaba’s Executive Officer, was asking. “Major Alenko, might we press you for an anecdote of Commander Shepard?”

“You could just, ah, ask Commander Shepard herself,” Kaidan flushed, suddenly put on the spot. “I doubt I’d do her after-action reports justice…”

“If she is anything like Captain Shepard, I imagine she would downplay her own role in crucial moments,” Moy’s eyes sparkled. “I would like to hear something from one of the marines who served under her. A time when she rose to her well-deserved reputation.”

“Virmire,” a handsome young Lieutenant -  _ Roe? I think? _ Liara thought - asked. “Tell us about Virmire.”

An awkward silence fell over the table as both Sybilla and Kaidan’s faces clouded over. Liara reached out and squeezed her human’s hand under the table.  _ Oh, love…  _

“That… may perhaps be a mission they do not wish to relive, Lieutenant,” Captain Shepard, of all people, began, but Kaidan took another long sip of his elasa and cut her off.

“No, Virmire is a good one.” He pointedly avoided the gaze of both Shepards, eyes firmly locked on Lieutenant Roe.

“Council intel had a salarian STG squad pinned down, with vital information on Saren. Reinforce and exfiltrate, seemed fairly routine. Until we found the place crawling with geth, of course. Heavily fortified installation. The salarian Captain, Kirrahe, told us about how Saren had allegedly found a cure for the krogan genophage, and was breeding an army. Krogan and geth… well, Kirrahe had lost half his command getting this intel, and had asked the Council for the fleet to shut it down. Unsurprisingly, all he got was us.

“We split into four teams; Ash - Gunnery Chief Williams - and I each led a squad of salarian infiltrators, Captain Kirrahe and Commander Shepard took the other two. Four objectives: the AA towers keeping the Normandy grounded, the lab where they were vat-breeding krogan, a landing pad where they were launching more geth, and the geothermal taps that powered the facility.”

“I’ve read that mission report,” the other senior officer at the table, Lieutenant Pittman, interjected. “I believe the strategy is taught - well,  _ was _ taught - at the Interplanetary Combatives Academy on Earth as an example of small unit tactics employed against a larger, entrenched position. Four simultaneous, coordinated assaults? Masterful. Absolutely masterful.”

“Fort Charles Upham, too,” James said quietly, glancing towards Sybilla. “There’s an entire class on Commander Shepard’s greatest hits. Elysium, Torfan, Chellix, Virmire, and now Horizon. They run the defense of the Illyria colony sim as an example of a ‘no-win’ scenario. My squad went through it fourteen times.” He shook his head, ruefully. “KIA, every time.”

Liara could feel Sybilla’s hand gripping hers, now. Her other was idly swirling the wineglass she was staring into. She didn’t appear to be listening. Liara knew her mind was elsewhere: on a salt-sprayed beach, surrounded by spotted, rocky cliffs, the mechanical buzz of geth and the chatter of small-arms fire everywhere. Liara had felt the edges of her bondmate’s memories of Virmire in their melds but had never dared to delve. They ached, throbbed, like a fresh wound.

“... turned the downed salarian ship’s drive-core into a makeshift bomb. Ash insisted on her team being the ones to guard it. My team hit the AA gun while Shepard hit the lab. And then…”

“And then Saren arrived,” Sybilla finished for him, draining what was left of her elasa.

“And a lot more geth,” Kaidan added. “The counterattack drove Captain Kirrahe off the landing pad. They hit the AA tower and the geothermal taps with what must have been a hundred geth apiece, and Commander Shepard’s team was caught in the middle. But we needed that damn tower, so she came to pull my team out of the fire. Hit Saren and an entire dropship of geth as they were landing, cut his reinforcements in half and scattered them before they could overwhelm us. Shepard fought Saren hand-to-hand in the middle of it. But that meant…” He took a deep breath and finished his own drink. The room was silent, all eyes upon him. “But that meant Chief Williams and her team were left alone at the geothermal taps, with the bomb.”

_ “Ash,” Sybilla had snarled into her earpiece, snatching up a rifle from one of Alenko’s bloodied marines, had started limping towards the bomb site.  _ _ “Ash, don’t you dare hang up on me. Ash. ASH!” _

_ Liara reached out, a comforting hand that was brushed off in a cold rage. Dark fury and dark energy both swirled about her, the eye of a hurricane of anguish. A pair of salarian marines stepped in between the Commander and her path. Her voice was like an executioner’s axe, descending. “Move. Now.” _

_ “Billie…” _

_ “NOW!” _

_ “Billie.” Kaidan’s voice. Soft, cool, calming. There was blood on his face and pain in his eyes. The knife in Liara’s gut twisted. _

_ “Billie, we have to go.” _

_ “We can’t leave her!” Her voice drops, and so too did the tendrils of biotic energy swirling around her. “I can’t leave her.” Her voice was raw. _

_ “You can’t save her,” Kaidan whispered. _

It took everything in Liara to keep herself from throwing her arms around Sybilla, to opening their minds and melding with her right there, to doing anything and everything in her power to comfort her lover, to try to ease the pain, the sorrow. The haunted look etched into her features.

_ Oh, Sybilla. Oh, love. I am so sorry. _

“It’s a call I couldn’t have made,” Kaidan admitted. “Maybe it’s because it was my number that was almost up, or maybe because Ash was a friend, but… I think about that beach every damn day. Yeah. That’s where those Council medals are from, the Silver Dagger, Star of Sur’Kesh, the Nova Cluster and the Thessian Crescent. We all got them, after Virmire. Because Shepard took a no-win scenario and turned it into a victory. Because of Ash.” He let out a long, heavy breath before asking in a hoarse whisper, "Who's like us?"

"Damn few," Vega muttered.

"... and they're all dead," Sybilla finished, in a small, sad voice. She gestured wordlessly to their silent attendants, who obediently refilled the glasses of the gathered soldiers. She lifted her newly-filled glass high, but not before lifting the hand that clutched Liara’s under the table, resting it in plain view, gave it a gentle squeeze for resolve in front of everyone, and for that Liara could have grabbed her and kissed her right then. Sybilla didn’t look back to her, but the maiden felt her heart swell in pride, in love.

“Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams,” Sybilla intoned. And then, in a quieter voice:

“I cannot rest from travel: I will drink Life to the lees:   
All times I have enjoy’d   
Greatly, have suffer’d greatly, both with those   
That loved me, and alone, on shore and when   
Thro’ scudding drifts the rainy Hyades   
Vext the dim sea…”

Her voice, unsteady, broke. Liara squeezed her hand tightly, willing every ounce of love and strength she had at her, as if they were melded, as if her bondmate could draw that strength from her at will. Sybilla's head fell, mouth working but unable to form sound, grasping for the strength to continue. Until another voice; older, strong, slightly hoarse, but with the same pitch and timbre, broke in, picking up smoothly where Sybilla had faltered, finishing the verse from Ulysses that Ashley Williams had been so enamoured of. All eyes turned towards Captain Shepard, who had her own glass upraised, her eyes firmly rooted to her daughter as she spoke, and Liara's heart felt like it could burst at the sudden, unexpected outpouring of love from this woman who could seem so cold, seem estranged. 

“I am become a name;   
For always roaming with a hungry heart   
Much have I seen and known; cities of men   
And manners, climates, councils, governments,   
Myself not least, but honor’d of them all.”

"Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams," Liara and the other officers echoed, raising their glasses in salute.

  
  


“She is beautiful, is she not?”

They had retired to Captain Shepard’s luxe observation deck after dinner, accompanied by several more bottles of the Illium Elite Brand and a great deal of various other liquors. Even after the heart-wrenching recounting of Virmire the dinner had regained its surprisingly light, easy atmosphere. The meal had been delicious, and Liara could feel at least a little of the tension easing in her partner as they sat and ate and listened to the Orizaba crew swap stories of their own exploits in the Alliance navy. Her own anxieties still bubbled at the fringes of her insides, but Sybilla's presence and closeness as always muted those, like a burning brand driving away the night's cold.

And then Sybilla had gotten dragged back into a discussion on the finer points of personal armament between James and Lieutenant Pittman, and with Kaidan and Lieutenant Commander Moy and Lieutenant Roe elsewhere engaged, Liara had been left to converse with Captain Shepard. Again.

They stood before the stone bust of the ancient human woman with the crested helmet and the owl. Ever the archaeologist, Liara had drifted straight towards it, wondered if it was a reproduction or a genuine artifact, wondered what it represented both in terms of anthropology and personally, to Captain Shepard.  _ Straight into her trap, most likely _ , she wondered ruefully, momentarily upset that she had allowed herself to present her back to this woman twice in the same day.

"She is," Liara agreed. "She has kind eyes, but there is a sternness to her. I am reminded of our Warrior-Goddess, Kurinth. My mother took me to her temple, in Serrice, when I was young."

"Pallas Athena," Captain Shepard spoke after a moment of silence as the two of them stood, admiring the bust. "An ancient Earth goddess of wisdom and warfare, among other things. She gave her name to one of the greatest city-states in human history. I had always meant to go." She smiled sadly. "I imagine it's gone, now. Along with many other things."

"I am sorry," Liara whispered.

"As am I," Captain Shepard murmured around her glass. She turned, crooking an eyebrow ever so slightly, just as Liara felt an arm slip possessively around her waist.

“Hi, Birdie,” Sybilla -  _ her _ Shepard - whispered, kissing her lightly just at the sweep of where her crests began to curl, sending a shiver down her spine and a rush of color to her cheeks. She couldn’t help but to lean back into Sybilla’s embrace, winding her fingers with her bondmate and letting out a very small sigh of contentment. Liara looked up, saw those glimmering green eyes staring down at her, at only her, and felt herself melting into her lover’s embrace as the rest of the universe faded into nothing. For these moments, fleeting as they were, nothing else mattered to Liara T’Soni but the look of absolute trust, of absolute love she saw in Sybilla Shepard’s eyes.

“He would have liked her,” a strong, slight tenor voice whispered roughly. Both asari and human turned with a start to notice the Captain staring at both of them intently, a strange, drawn look upon her face. “Basheer. He would have loved her. God, he would have hated how much you came to take after me, Sybilla… but he would have loved you, Doctor T’Soni. You remind me of him. You are… I meant it when I said you were good for her.”

Sybilla’s face clouded over. “She’s nothing like-”

“Your father was a good man,” Captain Shepard interrupted. “You were too young to remember, or perhaps simply too angry. We were both just children, when we had you, and we were both very career-focused. His kept him on Earth, and mine… well, mine took me to the stars, and we both knew from that first time we took you on your first atmospheric flight that out there…” She glanced up, and Liara’s eyes widened when she saw the glimmer of a tear in those cold, green eyes. “... we both knew that among the stars was where you belonged. You were born out here, after all.”

Sybilla stiffened, and Liara could feel the tension in her muscles build, the spring inside her coil. “Liara stood by me. She searched for me when I was gone. Father never did, not once. He could have called,” she hissed. “Could have written. Could have come to visit-”

“Do you remember when you stayed with him on Ramallah, for those six months while I was deployed to the batarian border?”

“Of course,” she spat. “It’s  _ tattooed on my arm _ , mother. As if you’d forgotten. My only real connection to Earth-”

“Do you remember being sick the entire time, from the pollen and dust?” Captain Shepard cut her off. “Do you remember being dizzy, barely leaving the yard, because your feet couldn’t get adjusted to solid ground beneath them? Or how the sun overhead would drive you into hiding somewhere cold and dark, because it burned your skin and your eyes? How the unregulated temperature gave you heat stroke during the day, and chilled you to the bone at night? Do you remember crying,  _ every night _ , because the noise of the city frightened you? How I used to have to sing to you, from my night watches aboard the bridge, in order to get you to sleep?”

She took a step forward, trembling, face darkened in fury, hands clenched at her sides. “Do you remember the eezo in your blood poisoning you? Turning your skin grey, turning your veins black? How your screams could shatter glass? How a flick of your arm could send a grown man across a room? You were  _ six _ , Sybilla. You have a single, pleasant memory of Ramallah and you have forgotten the rest, because mercifully, your mind has erased it for you. Because the rest of it was a waking nightmare, for you  _ and _ for Basheer and I. I gave up that posting as soon as I could do so without going AWOL to come back for you, to take you back into space, because living on Earth was  _ killing you _ . And all your father could do was watch, and pray, helpless, unable to do anything but wait for me to come back to Earth and take you away from him. Again.”

She exhaled, heavily, her face a few inches from Sybilla’s, the daughter’s eyes downcast. Her voice dropped, now merely forceful, rather than furious. “Sybilla, he couldn’t face you because he thought he failed you. He lived with that regret for the rest of his days. But he was a good man, and he loved you, and he would be proud of the woman you’ve become. As am I.”

“I never knew,” Sybilla whispered after a long moment. “All this time…”

“I am to blame,” her mother sighed. “I knew you wanted to follow me into the stars, wanted to follow in my damn fool footsteps, and the best way for you to do that was to enlist, as I had. I wanted you to be strong, to be independent. I didn’t want you to live in the shadow of your last name. Your grandparents…” She shook her head. “Well, if you think I’m conservative, be glad you never had to bring your asari bondmate to meet  _ my _ mother and father. I was all but disowned for having the temerity to date a Palestinian graduate student I’d met on shore leave. And then when you came along, and neither Basheer nor I had any inclination to marry…” the Captain blew out an exasperated breath, rolling her eyes. They fell back on Liara, and softened again. 

“He would have loved you,” Captain Shepard repeated. “I can see the two of you, talking for hours and hours and hours, lost in the minutia of a single passage in some incomprehensibly dull historical paper. He’d brew a fresh pot of tea just to let it get cold, while he read by a windowsill. It always smelled of-”

“-honey and dried sage,” Sybilla finished, softly. She squeezed Liara’s hand, her arm trembling.

“I would have loved to have met him,” Liara managed, her own voice thick. “Just as… I would have loved for you to have met my own mother, Benezia, before… before. I think you and her would have had many interesting conversations, Captain Shepard.”

“Hannah,” she whispered.

Both asari and human stared at her, slack-jawed.

“It would be… cold… for my daughter-in-law to refer to me as ‘Captain Shepard,’ would it not?” She crooked an eyebrow in a hauntingly familiar manner, and Liara could feel her head spin as the translated words and their meaning began to sink in. The eyebrow continued to raise. “You  _ are _ intending on formalizing your relationship… Sybilla?”

“Well, yes,” a suddenly bright-red Sybilla stammered. “Yes, obviously, but if you hadn’t noticed, the last three years have been a little busy for the two of us…”

“Yes,” the elder Shepard said in a voice dripping with scorn, “I can see how when faced with the imminent and violent death of all organic life in the galaxy, you might want to put off finding a few moments of happiness with the woman you love. What an absolute  _ inconvenience _ , reminding your life partner of her significance to you and formalizing your commitment in front of your remaining friends and family. I am sure personally attending to every ground operation conducted in every theatre of war across Council space takes precedence over something as trifling as setting aside an afternoon for the woman who brought you back from death.”

Sybilla’s mouth worked soundlessly as she stood, caught in the spotlight of her mother’s unimpressed stare, flailing helplessly, her face the same shade of crimson as Liara’s dress and her eyes as wide as the Star of Terra on her breast. Liara, for her part, was somewhere between mortified and hysterical; practically vibrating as she forced herself to turn away and cover her mouth with her hands to stifle the laughter that threatened to bubble over everything.

Hannah crossed her arms. “She hasn’t even asked you properly, has she, Doctor T’Soni?”

“I would be pleased if you were to call me Liara,” she said, stifling the giggles that threatened to overcome her. “And, to her credit, she did promise me something about… what were your words, love? ‘Marriage, old age, and a lot of little blue children?’”

  
  


The five of them walked the hallway of the Orizaba’s docking arm in a comfortable silence, Hannah surprisingly opting to personally escort her ships’s guests back to their own vessel. The looks of surprise that had crossed Moy, Roe and Pittman made it plain that this did not and had not ever happened. An unspoken thought was shared among the Normandy shore party to simply accept it, unquestioningly, as a happy byproduct of a most extraordinary afternoon. The two Shepards walked side by side, not speaking, not even looking at each other, but with identical expressions of something approaching familiarity and contentment. This, too, was part of that unspoken yet fully understood mental compact between James, Kaidan and Liara - to comment or even look to closely at them would be to break the spell, would be to ripple the still pond they floated upon.

“You could come aboard for the tour,” Sybilla broke the silence finally, as they drew towards the airlock of the Normandy. She flashed a playful smile. “She’s not like the Orizaba. It wouldn’t take three days to do a walkthrough of the decks.”

“Perhaps we should not push our luck, my daughter,” Hannah said slowly. “You and I have duties to attend to. And…” She folded her arms. “And a promised tour of the legendary Normandy SR-2 is certainly enough of a draw to warrant a second visit. Twice in the same year - one might imagine I am becoming sentimental in my old age.’’

“What, you? Never,” Sybilla countered, the corners of her lips curling upwards.

“Not old?” Hannah’s eyebrow cocked.

“No, sentimental,” the daughter’s face split into a cheeky grin. They shared a quiet chuckle, a quiet smile. A long pause. “Mother-”

“Take care of her,” Hannah interjected, turning to Kaidan. “All of you, please. And yourselves, of course. Take care of each other.”

Kaidan, quietly: “I always do. Ma’am.”

“I know you do, Major Alenko.” The Captain’s tone was as soft as her gaze. “You always have.” She drew herself up, ramrod-straight, chin forward, and brought her arm smoothly up in salute. All three marines snapped to attention, returning the salute smartly. Relaxing her posture, she turned to Liara-

-and grunted in surprise when the young asari flung her arms around her and wrapped her in a warm embrace. She could hear James and Kaidan and even Sybilla choke out gasps of surprise behind her, but Liara no longer cared.  _ Just once, I want to be the one that surprises her _ , she thought impishly. The older woman was rigid in her arms, seemed uncertain. Then, after a long, strained moment, she felt her arms around her, returning the embrace with a compassion that flooded through her like warm tea on a winter morning.

“ _ Thank you, Honored Matron, for your hospitality. I shall strive to be a dutiful and obedient second-daughter,” _ she whispered in Ara’at, bowing her head formally and weaving her hands together in a traditional Armali gesture of matrilineal respect.

Hannah stared at her for a long moment, something in her eyes shimmering softly, before she dipped her head. And then, in a stilted but perfectly passable Ara’at, the Shepard matriarch murmured softly “ _ Walk in the light of the moon, Daughter of Athame.” _

And then she’d turned and departed without another word, leaving the four of them to stand in stunned silence for a moment. Until Sybilla, once again, broke it.

“Did she jus-”

“Yes,” Liara managed.

“Was that..?” Kaidan, puzzled, glanced to Liara.

“Yes,” Sybilla answered for her.

“Your mom speaks asari?” Vega asked, equally bewildered.

“Ara’at,” the maiden corrected. “The dialect of Armali. Where I grew up. How..?”

“Because, my love,” her bondmate said with a long-suffering sigh. “Because my mother is the most exasperating woman in the galaxy.” A light smile played about her lips, and Liara thought she could detect a note of pride in her voice, in her eyes. She reached out, took Liara’s hand, and gave it a gentle squeeze. “Come on, Bluebird. Let’s go home.” She paused for a second, and her voice dropped to a low, throaty murmur that sent flashes of lightning running all along the asari’s skin. “We have plans to make.”


End file.
